Results 5,081-5,100 of 7,278 for speaker:Dick Roche

Seanad: Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages (5 Dec 2006)

Dick Roche: I am at something of a loss to understand the basis for the amendment. The provision as it stands provides under section 3(1)(b) that the application form must be either signed by the prisoner or if the prisoner is unable to sign, the applicant can make a mark which somebody will witness. Therefore, the provision exists already. I fail to understand how a situation would arise whereby...

Seanad: Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages (5 Dec 2006)

Dick Roche: To be clear, the current arrangement is that a person who cannot sign can make a mark. This covers all the practical situations likely to arise. We are talking about a person getting on a postal vote system in a prison.

Seanad: Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages (5 Dec 2006)

Dick Roche: I am delighted the Senator has given me the opportunity to touch on a number of points. There is no silver bullet solution to preparing an electoral register. A quote I made in the other House pointed out that one of the international bodies that considers this area states the most difficult and intractable area, and the one most fraught with difficulties, is the preparation of the...

Seanad: Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages (5 Dec 2006)

Dick Roche: Exactly. I have changed my address several times, as many of us have done. There is no automatic way for the PPS number system to note that one has changed one's address, or moved in or out of the country. I accept that Senator Bannon's amendments are well-intended, but they are simply not practical. They would not work for the reasons I have given. Over 250,000 people from the ten new EU...

Seanad: Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages (5 Dec 2006)

Dick Roche: Ireland does not have such a system. It exists in some continental countries, at least in theory, but it does not apply here. I would like to debunk the myth that some marvellous work was done in Northern Ireland and that it worked. When the work that was being done there encountered some very serious difficulties, tens of millions of pounds had to be invested in it. Hundreds of thousands...

Seanad: Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages (5 Dec 2006)

Dick Roche: When one considers that an average of 30,000 people die in Ireland every year, that last year, 90,000 new homes were sold, a further 50,000 homes changed hands and that 45,000 people over the age of 18 came to this country to work, it is likely that there were over 500,000 changes of address in 2005. I am not sure that all those changes could be tracked by some kind of automatic system...

Seanad: Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages (5 Dec 2006)

Dick Roche: The Senator must have been very slow off the mark.

Seanad: Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages (5 Dec 2006)

Dick Roche: That is right.

Seanad: Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages (5 Dec 2006)

Dick Roche: The responsibility for the field work lies with the councils. I recognised that this was a huge task for councils, and I appreciate that councils are working very hard. For all the negatives one hears about local government, much good work is going on in the local government sector. I would not blame a small city council like Waterford for the names of 1,400 people who have died being on...

Seanad: Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages (5 Dec 2006)

Dick Roche: They stated that the occupant had until 9 December to contact the council indicating he or she was off the register. Those letters went out in early November. The response to those letters has been huge; replies to 20% to 30% of them are being received. That does not mean the remainder are disenfranchised. Some of the remainder of those 170,000 are people who have changed address. I did...

Seanad: Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages (5 Dec 2006)

Dick Roche: No, unfortunately. With regard to Senator Cummins's question on whether the field work has been followed up, I issued a circular letter to councils advising them that when I checked the list of deletions in respect of cases in my area — a list which Senator O'Rourke has not yet received which I regret because local authorities should operate within the spirit of this process — I noted...

Seanad: Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages (5 Dec 2006)

Dick Roche: I do, he is a nice man. We also gave an instruction to councils that before they deleted, for example, the name of a person from the register living as a tenant in a council house, they should use the other resources available to them. Where they had access to other databases, they should have been prudent and used those, particularly in areas where a disproportionate level of deletions...

Seanad: Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages (5 Dec 2006)

Dick Roche: Until this process started, the straight answer to that question is "No, they were not". When the guidelines were being put in place I created a link between the register of births and deaths and each council office. Now when a registration form indicating a person is dead is received in the central office in Dublin, an automatic electronic list is passed to each council indicating a Mr. X...

Seanad: Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages (5 Dec 2006)

Dick Roche: Senator O'Rourke made the point well. When the register was being drafted previously and the field worker took the view that the person was not there and should not be eligible for the register, the person was struck off and no written notice was given. This time we gave councils the resources to recruit additional field personnel, and I specified that the councils should recruit the census...

Seanad: Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages (5 Dec 2006)

Dick Roche: The deadline for the local authorities is 2 January. The completion date for work on the register will be 12 January. That gives until 15 February for the hard copy to be produced. The register, of course, will be published on 1 February.

Seanad: Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages (5 Dec 2006)

Dick Roche: ——and 1 February——

Seanad: Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages (5 Dec 2006)

Dick Roche: No, the court will have to complete its work by 12 January.

Seanad: Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages (5 Dec 2006)

Dick Roche: The courts will all have to be in the early part of January. Under the existing arrangements they had to be, effectively, the week before Christmas. One can always say there is never going to be a good time, but the reality is that there is no practical benefit from a further extension. All that happens is that we do what is normally done in this country, namely, that everything is put on...

Seanad: Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages (5 Dec 2006)

Dick Roche: We procrastinate and matters are not improved by doing so. It would be much better to tell the councils they have until 2 January, that they have the resources and can get the back office work done. They should therefore get the job done. Once there is a proper register the big challenge for the politicians to maintain it in that condition. When we are back in Government, we shall do that.

Seanad: Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages (5 Dec 2006)

Dick Roche: As a former postal worker, I tend to agree with the Senator. There is a small point to be considered, however, namely, that we could not take the job away from the councils without causing some difficulties. I did not exclude the idea of postmen and postwomen being recruited. However, there were some industrial or human relations issues that had to be dealt with. To return to the general...